Urgent Cinema: Seeking Complex Representations of Black Life

In his 2016 short film New Neighbors, artist, filmmaker, and curator E.G. Bailey explores how race shapes daily interactions, refuting the oft-repeated notion of a “postracial” America. The story of an African-American family’s relocation to a new, predominantly white neighborhood, New Neighbors offers a thoughtful consideration of racialized barriers to home, community, and safety. The film features a local cast including actor, playwright, and performance artist Sha Cage, Bailey’s wife and co-founder (with Bailey) of the Minnesota Spoken Word Association.

New Neighbors depicts a family with two teenage sons acclimating to a new neighborhood. What was the inspiration for the film, and where in Minneapolis does it take place?

Sometimes works come in a flash, fully formed, almost already completed. New Neighbors was like that. It was first written in London. We were touring Sha’s U/G/L/Y, and one morning I was scrolling through Facebook and came across an article about the woman that was pulled from her home by 19 officers because a neighbor thought she was breaking into her own home. I couldn’t stop thinking about the article all day, and I wrote the script on the taxi ride home after taking the kids around the city.

Having two young sons, I’ve been dealing with how parents are affected by the onslaught of police brutality, how they confront the fears and burden that comes with raising young Black men. Some months earlier, I directed a staged reading of Ted Shine’s Herbert III. In it, a Black couple waits for their son to return home, but the mother anxiously wants to call the police station, the hospital, fearing some harm has come to her son. I thought of this when I read the article, and I thought about what mothers do to try to protect their children. I thought about how mothers carry the weight of the deaths, and the fears that must latch in their throats with the constant flowing of blood. I thought of a mother reading this article about Fay Wells, hearing the news about Trayvon and Tamir, and what actions would she take to keep her sons safe, even if it seemed slightly absurd. That’s where New Neighbors started. We got home and I stayed up the rest of the night writing the short story. Rewrote it back in the States. Rewrote it again for a staged reading for a Black Lives Black Words showcase at the Guthrie. But it was always intended to be a film.

Did you envision the project as a grounded in the politics and demographics of a specific place, or did you intend for the film to be broadly representative?

I don’t know if the story or the film is so much about a specific locality. It’s not intended to be landlocked. It’s more about race and class than it is about place, even though I think it carries a little bit of different places I’ve lived. There’s a little bit of Crystal Lake, Illinois in there. There’s some Fargo in there, some South Bend. And obviously a good deal of Minnesota in there. If it did have a locality, it would be the Midwest that these places represent. But I was more interested in the relationships between the characters, and the classism and racism that often exists in quiet, comforted Midwestern suburbs, even when it’s not acknowledged or tries not to reveal itself. This is part of why I kept the camera close to the characters—to reveal enough to give the texture of the neighborhood but focus on the interactions between the neighbors and the tensions underlying the situation. I also tried to carry this tension into the camera style and movement.

New Neighbors addresses the violence faced by Black Americans through the depiction of restrained, and even terse, interactions between neighbors. Why did you decide to focus on the subtleties and racial dynamics of day-to-day interactions?

I think with the news cycle and social media, we’re inundated, sometimes even overwhelmed, with the issues and the headlines. But I was interested in how these issues manifest themselves in interpersonal relationships. How are these issues displayed, what is the coded language that is used? What is the toll that it takes on those involved? We work, we take stands, we protest, we fight for justice and equity, which are more so public demonstrations of our beliefs and politics but what are the day to day negotiations? How do we carry our fears and prejudices into our daily actions and conversations?

I was also interested in exploring how those with privilege engage with those seeking equity. There are those that are skeptical, even reactionary, and hold to their prejudices; there are those that stay at a distance that enjoy the benefits of Black genius but don’t want to engage with us or our struggle. And those that attempt to have a conversation, attempt to establish connection but may also be too self-satisfied with that attempt, and do nothing to really further equity and justice.

Did you seek to capture parts of life that are frequently ignored by the media?

Too often the representation of Black images is tailored by the media to perpetuate stereotypes and become supporting evidence for particular narratives about Black life. Much of my work lately tries to counter these narratives and create new representations that reveal our diversity and complexity. This is not a type of story you often see in dealing with these issues, and the action the mother takes is unique in itself. But I also wanted to make clear that the family belonged in the neighborhood not only because they have a right to, but because they are as affluent as others in the neighborhood. Still a lack of class difference does not guarantee acceptance, because regardless of their affluence they are still the other; they must fight for the acknowledgement, and acceptance, of their belonging.

Finally, I wanted to show that beneath the teenage angst of the sons, and the stress it causes the mother, this was a loving and bonded family. The father may not be accompanying them because he is working, but he is present in their lives. They also have a wider family network to call on. Though within a limited framework, I wanted to show a complex family dealing with complex issues without reverting to tired tropes that Black stories are often burden with.